Rare Tobacco
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Stuff like Esoterica, Germains, McClelland stuff (which are now discontinued) and more. You will have to either be very diligent on checking to find drops online, or purchase them for a higher price through consignment sites like pipestud or 4noggins.
Rare does not mean favourite, so for that special occasion you could probably put away something 'common'.
Dilligence, tenacity, your cell phone and Google are your friends in a quest for unobtaniums. And a thick wallet. Buy the good and premium stuff now at regular prices, in 5 to 10 years you'll have a cellar full of rare, difficult to find and unobtaniums. You'll have ten times as much and money left over. Then every day can be a special occasion.
I look at some of the European pipe shops that will ship to the United States like Esterval's in Germany. They carry HU blends and you never see them for sell in the U.S.. Plus they carry some Rattray's blends I've never seen available over here.
Like the best French and Italian wines-- properly stored, sealed in tins or air tight mason jars-- pipe tobacco can not only last for decades but improve. Ten to fifteen years ago, it was a small cult that focused on this fact, and many in the cult were fairly loyally devoted, more often that not, to a dozen or two discontinued blends mainly from storied English producers like Dunhill, Balkan Sobranie, and Sullivan Powell.
Flash forward to today, and you'll find many here routinely "cellar" much of what they buy, laying down their favorites (from some of the brands mentioned in earlier posts) for smoking 1, 3, 5 or ten or more years in the future.
In the old days, there was brisk trade on Ebay (until they changed and began aggressively enforcing rules against the private sale of tobacco). Unfortunately, unlike vintage wine there is not as yet an extensive network of reliable professional sellers, and ideas about what is a "fair market price" can vary wildly.
To take one example-- even with a single, especially popular "classic" that has remained, more or less, in continuous production for close to a century, a fifty gram tin of Dunhill's My Mixture 965 now produced under the Peterson brand name can be found readily for about $14 at most well stocked tobacconists these days.
A tin produced in or shortly before 2018 by the same Denmark-based company (once known as Orlik, later STG) and notwithstanding claims that absolutely nothing about the production of 965 has changed, is to many people more desirable, and even worth a bit more money (although it's not entirely clear if this is because the Dunhill name remained on the label or because a tin has a couple of years of aging).
Go back a few years, to earlier Orlik-era production (say, the early to mid-2010s), and tins regularly fetch $35. And prices can quickly escalate from there. A tin produced during the late "Murray's" era (blended in Ireland) can regularly sell in a matter of seconds for almost $100.
Go back further to the period prior to 1980-1, when Dunhill blended and packaged 965 itself in England, and the price doubles or triples. Indeed, an asking price for a tin without a speck of rust can be $500+--although how many tins actually trade hands at such a figure is really anybody's guess.
As for any of us that still may have some 965 "cellared" from the 1970s or before, or who luck out, as occasionally happens, stumbling on a stash at a neighborhood thrift store? Do we open it and smoke it? On a special occasion? This will routinely spark a pretty lively debate. But, at least to my mind--not unlike wine, books, old masters paintings, retired Ferrari racing cars, old fountain pens, contemporary art, and of course vintage pipes (and unlike Beluga caviar), pipe tobacco is now--for better or worse--a "collectible."
Flash forward to today, and you'll find many here routinely "cellar" much of what they buy, laying down their favorites (from some of the brands mentioned in earlier posts) for smoking 1, 3, 5 or ten or more years in the future.
In the old days, there was brisk trade on Ebay (until they changed and began aggressively enforcing rules against the private sale of tobacco). Unfortunately, unlike vintage wine there is not as yet an extensive network of reliable professional sellers, and ideas about what is a "fair market price" can vary wildly.
To take one example-- even with a single, especially popular "classic" that has remained, more or less, in continuous production for close to a century, a fifty gram tin of Dunhill's My Mixture 965 now produced under the Peterson brand name can be found readily for about $14 at most well stocked tobacconists these days.
A tin produced in or shortly before 2018 by the same Denmark-based company (once known as Orlik, later STG) and notwithstanding claims that absolutely nothing about the production of 965 has changed, is to many people more desirable, and even worth a bit more money (although it's not entirely clear if this is because the Dunhill name remained on the label or because a tin has a couple of years of aging).
Go back a few years, to earlier Orlik-era production (say, the early to mid-2010s), and tins regularly fetch $35. And prices can quickly escalate from there. A tin produced during the late "Murray's" era (blended in Ireland) can regularly sell in a matter of seconds for almost $100.
Go back further to the period prior to 1980-1, when Dunhill blended and packaged 965 itself in England, and the price doubles or triples. Indeed, an asking price for a tin without a speck of rust can be $500+--although how many tins actually trade hands at such a figure is really anybody's guess.
As for any of us that still may have some 965 "cellared" from the 1970s or before, or who luck out, as occasionally happens, stumbling on a stash at a neighborhood thrift store? Do we open it and smoke it? On a special occasion? This will routinely spark a pretty lively debate. But, at least to my mind--not unlike wine, books, old masters paintings, retired Ferrari racing cars, old fountain pens, contemporary art, and of course vintage pipes (and unlike Beluga caviar), pipe tobacco is now--for better or worse--a "collectible."
I realize that it’s all mostly subjective, but is their anything out their that’s widely considered a “holy grail” of pipe tobacco? Some fabled year or blend that’s so rare it’s reached mythical status? The Honus Wagner rookie card, the Inverted Jenny, the rocket-firing Boba Fett of pipe tobacco collecting?
Unopened old ass tins. The older the better as far as these guys are concerned.
Let me be the contrarian. I take the worn principle of supply and demand as an ethical one too. If a product is in demand, it ought to be met by supply and be attainable and distributed accordingly. So my quest is for readily available blends that are every bit as enjoyable as unicorn blends. I want to support the blenders that make the effort. Hey, I'm not a killjoy for those who love the hunt for the obscure. It's just my way of expressing how I like to see it done. It isn't my fault I've ended up, over time, with McClelland blends, discontinued Dunhill, and others of that ilk -- that was time and chance. I'll fully enjoy those blends too; I just won't hunt for them or pay multiples of their original price.
Always strikes me as odd. I have often repeated the story about the tobacconist in Essex that went out of business circa early 1980s that had box loads of 'cutter top' tins for One Pound each. I purchase a few and smoked them and I should have purchased them all but I got talked out of it by my Father! I have often shared older 'cutter tops' with a chum on this forum who in turn shares them with any interested forum members. I have a bunch more that I am in two minds about ever smoking principally because they are probably something I wouldn't enjoy as they are all Rattray's blends from the 1950s or thereabouts. I think Sablebrush summed it up well when he said that 'Mummy dust just doesn't hold any allure for him'.
I only buy tins that says it's the "BEST" right on the label. I'm not about to waste my time with anything less. 
You could always donate them to a poor child like myself.
It is about the limited number of tins and the numbers on the tin. All of mine are the numbers most valued of course.
@americaman trouble with 'cutter tops' is once opened whatever is in them fades very quickly.
Shitdust I say...shitdust.I only buy tins that says it's the "BEST" right on the label. I'm not about to waste my time with anything less.
I use to buy time tested, readily available classic blends both tinned and pouched ,the definition OTC blend or gas station tobacco will not make me look em down ,I can smoke those in my Dunhill or Castello pipe, But what I can't afford is having it both ways ,buying spendy pipes and overpriced tobacco
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